This invention generally relates to reclining back mechanisms for a support frame, and more particularly to an adjustable reclining back mechanism for use with baby strollers, baby carriages, high chairs, walkers, seats, and similar perambulatory furniture for children and babies.
Baby strollers and carriages are designed to transport babies and toddlers comfortably whether awake or asleep. Many modern stroller designs include a reclining back mechanism which permits the rider both to sit up and observe the passing scene and to pivot downwardly to facilitate sleeping. Indeed, small children are often lulled to sleep by the pleasant motion of the stroller, and it is important to be able to recline the seat back smoothly and easily to permit the child to continue sleeping without interruption.
In addition, there is a need to adjust the seat back to various positions between fully reclining and fully upright, to carry children of different sizes, to accommodate pillows and blankets, to change the reclining posture of the child, to facilitate feeding during travel, and the like.
In the prior art there are known various arrangements to permit reclining the seat back of a stroller to various selected angles. Generally speaking, such arrangements include the tubular sides of a stroller frame member to support the seat, a plurality of detents formed or secured to the stroller sides, and some form of latch that secures the upper portion of a reclining seat back to the detents. The latch may include pins extending from opposed sides of the seat back, or a rod extending the width of the seat back, and the detents often comprise slots or stops extending from the sides and disposed to receive the pins or rod ends of the back. These arrangements are exemplary only; often there are additional links and bars interposed in the mechanism.
Prior art reclining arrangements for strollers suffer from at least two significant drawbacks. First, the seat back can only be reclined to angular positions defined by the slots or stops defined by the detent members. There is no opportunity for selecting a desired reclination according to the needs of the child; rather, a reclination defined by the detent members that is closest to the desired position must be employed. In addition, the reclining arrangements generally rely on engagements between the sides of the reclining back and both the left and right sides of the stroller frame. Reorienting the stroller mechanism so that both sides engage corresponding detent stops or slots while also monitoring the safety of the child in the stroller can require more manual dexterity than possessed by many individuals. Furthermore, the normal aging of aluminum surfaces and plastic surfaces reduces their lubricity, so that a reclining mechanism that operates smoothly when new may become erratic and sticky due to increasing friction between the detents and the pins or rods that engage them.